Fast Food Cheaper than Supermarkets?
In the UK fast food profits are apparently up due to people opting for buying takeaways instead of going out to restaurants and spending more than they can afford. I can partly understand the theory but I don’t agree that a pizza from Dominoes is cheaper than going to say Pizza Express, or an Italian restaurant, and buying a pizza from there. Dominoes is probably the most expensive pizza place going.
In the news they’ve now added, however, that fast food is in fact cheaper than buying from the supermarkets, something I complete disagree with! How can paying over £2 for a quarterpounder burger from McDonalds be cheaper than shopping in a supermarket? And just to prove it, here’s a couple of fast food recipes to compete with two of my favourite meals. The difference? The homemade ones will be far more filling!
Quarterpounder with Cheese
You can buy aberdeen angus quarterpounder burgers from most supermarkets. In Marks & Spencers you can usually get a deal of 8 burgers (2 packs) for £5. That’s 62.5p per burger. Or you can get the non aberdeen angus burgers for £4 for 2 packs, so just 50p a burger.
Need
1 quarterpounder burger (Aberdeen Angus from M&S - 62.5p)
1 white roll (20p max)
A cheese slice or some sliced cheddar cheese (10p max)
Half an onion (10p maybe?)
Tomato ketchup (pennies)
Total Cost: £1.05 compared to over £2!
I also like to add lettuce and plenty of it, again, this is not very expensive, 10-20p max.
We usually put our burgers on the George Foreman, and fry our onions. Simply put it all together as you would and hey presto, a quarterpounder with cheese for about £1.00. In McDonalds you can expect to pay over £2 for one, and in Burger King the ‘Angus’ (which is meant to be a quarterpounder but really doesn’t seem to be when you get it) is over £3.
Sausage and Egg Muffin
I adore these and am very impressed that McDonalds uses free range eggs too, however they are still quite expensive (around £1.50-2 for a sausage and egg mcmuffin I think). To replicate this at home:
You Need
White muffin (20p max)
1 free range egg (25p max)
100g Sausagemeat (40p average)
Slice(s) of cheese (10p max)
Total Cost: 95p on average compared to £1.50-2.
Flatten the sausagemeat into a burger shape and either put it under the grill or on a george foreman or sandwich press. Poach the egg. Easiest is to do it in a microwave egg poacher as it stays round then! But you can do it as normal if you need to. Toast the muffin. Then just make the muffin up. Goes well with a good strong cup of tea!
Shopping for Food
We don’t buy ‘basics’. I’m sure some of it tastes just as good as normal brands, and some stuff is normal brands repackaged, however I can’t be bothered to work out what is and what isn’t good! I like decent food, I like meat to be meat and not gristle, bone and fat!
With a bit of trial and error, most fast food meals can be recreated at home, in a cheaper and probably healthier way. Some can seem a little fiddly but once you’ve got the method covered then you’ll find it a quick and easy meal to recreate and enjoy 
- February 18th
- 2 Comments
) and a couple of packs of bread mixes. Okay, so maybe bread mix packs are cheating, however for 65p I can make 2lb of bread, enough for us for about 4-5 days. It costs around double the price to buy it from the shops. Once I try using flour, yeast and the other ingrediants I’ll be able to save money even more.